Logging In
Amity’s POV
Amity stared at the character creation screen on her computer, more specifically she was staring at the many blank boxes that were covering it. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d hoped. “Are you sure this is supposed to help with stress relief?” She spoke into her head set. “I don’t even know what half of these words are. What does HP even mean?”
“HP stands for hit points,” she heard Willow’s voice through the headphones. It had taken an embarrassingly long time for Willow to explain to Amity how to use discord voice chats but thankfully they had finally gotten it to work even if her microphone was spotty. “So a lot of this stuff will make sense once you’ve played for a little bit but for now I’m gonna help you set up a character, you can always change it later if you want.”
Amity scrolled over the page again and looked over the time, it was already 10 o’clock and this was definitely going to take a while. She really didn’t deserve this much of Willow’s help but was extremely grateful for it. “Okay so what first?”
“I’d start with your character’s class. It’s like a skillset.”
“What class are you?” Amity asked, hoping for a good idea.
“Oh, I’m a druid, they do plant magic; but for you I was thinking that the regular wizard class would be good, they’re all about accuracy and power, plus my party could really use another character with a magic class.”
“Wizard sounds fine,” Amity said as she filled in the text box, “now what?”
Willow kept guiding Amity through the rest of the page. By the end she’d created a smart looking high elven wizard with green hair and a high intelligence stat. “Now, all that’s left is to create a username and…” Willow yawned “start playing.”
Amity looked at the clock on her desk, damn it was almost midnight already, and of course Willow needed to work in the morning. She could almost picture the girl dozing off in front of her computer. “Hey, you sound tired Willow. I’m pretty sure I can figure it out from here if you want to log off.”
“Hmm?” Willow said, definitely half asleep already. “Oh, yeah that might not be a bad idea. Umm…” There was a pause and the sound of faint tapping from Willow’s keyboard. “Actually, if you’d like, one of my party members is online right now, she’s usually on all night. It’s a good idea to have someone there to show you around when you first start playing but if you’d rather try by yourself-”
“No!” Amity said a bit too quickly before speaking again more softly, “I mean, I think having a guide would be a good idea.” Just making her character was getting her heart rate up, Amity couldn’t imagine being dumped into an open world game alone right now.
“Okay, her username is Lazura34, I’ll send her a message and have her meet you at the big fountain about a block to the right of the tavern you’ll spawn in. Do you have a username I can tell her to look out for?”
Amity thought for a second before shrugging and placing her fingers on the keyboard. “It’ll be the same as my username on discord.” She said, carefully typing out ‘Witchling’ into the text box.
Luz’s POV
Luz sprinted through the dungeon’s corridor, the torch she was holding offering barely enough light to illuminate her immediate surroundings but at least it was light enough that it didn’t lessen her running speed. The stone golems swiped at her from behind but she was just enough ahead that they couldn’t reach her . A whooshing sound came from behind her and she ducked just in time to avoid taking damage, sure she was at a high enough level that she could probably take these guys but she’d spent the last month looking for this artifact and she needed as much supplies and HP as she could for the rest of this mission.
Finally the cavern opened and it started to get brighter. Luz felt a smile creep onto her face as she got the brass key from her inventory, slammed it into lock on the door at the end of the corridor, and went through right before the mob of rock golems caught her.
Luz let out a massive sigh of relief and slumped back in her chair as the music shifted out of the battle soundtrack. It had taken her five attempts to get past that last chase sequence and restocking equipment between tries had been a nightmare in and of itself but… Luz’s eyes drifted towards the glowing red and black chest in the middle of the volcano themed cavern on her screen… it will have been worth it.
Without wasting any more time, Luz approached the chest but right before she was within reach a rumbling sound came through her headphones and the music shifted again. Suddenly a giant rock golem fell from the ceiling, landing with a shock-wave that knocked Luz prone. The rock golem looked very similar to the ones that Luz had just escaped from, only about ten times as big with glowing lava running through the cracks that had been in it’s design.
She probably could have spent hours staring at the detail that the game developers had placed into this but unfortunately this mission had no save points and the golem was rearing it’s huge, but slow, rock fist to strike at her.
Luz used one of her last few stamina points to spring to her feet and rush behind a pillar right as the golem brought its fist down to where she had been only moments prior. Alright, Luz thought as she drew up her hood, activating her cloak's stealth ability and using the ten second window to get away from where the golem knew to look for her, magma golem, it’s an elemental monster and fire elementals are vulnerable to… Luz smiled as she used her brief moment of cover to pull out her artificer blueprint book and look at the glyphs she had prepared until she found the one she was looking for. Perfect.
She peeked out from behind the column she was hiding behind to try to get a better view of her surroundings before the golem spotted her. There were piles of rubble around her, the floor was bobbing in and out of lava in timed intervals and there were lamps hanging from a few of the columns that were definitely wide enough for her character to perch on. “Oh yeah,” Luz mumbled to herself, “It’s all coming together.”
The golem finally turned so that its back was to her and Luz was about to take the opportunity to make a run for it when suddenly a ringing alert came from her computer.
“Gahh!!!” Luz shouted at the sudden noise and flew backwards out of her chair, sending the mouse flying. There was a gurgling sound from her headphones and Luz got back to eye level with the screen right in time to see the golem heading straight forward. “Damnit!” Luz shouted as she ran from her compromised hiding spot, the golem hot on her tail. With one hand, Luz moved her character, coming dangerously close to running into piles of rubble or falling into lava holes while the other hand scrambled against the carpet trying to find the mouse she’d dropped all while the ringing from her computer was interrupting the game’s audio cues giving her even less time to react to collapsing floors and different strike moves. Finally, she grabbed her mouse and slammed it back on her desk.
Immediately, Luz slammed herself onto the ground in the middle of her sprint, causing her character to go into a slide and in that split second Luz scrolled her mouse's wheel and right clicked at the perfect time. Then Luz jumped back to her feet and continued sprinting forward as the golem stepped on the glyph she’d ingeniously labeled ‘wind’. The golem flew backwards, not as far as its smaller counterparts would have but it was still knocked prone and Luz used the time it took for the monster to get up to press the hotkey that would pick up the call from discord.
“Hello?” Luz called into her headset, still very much focused on the fight.
“Hey Lazura,” a very familiar yet tired voice responded.
“Oh, hey Salix,” Luz said as she flung a smoke bomb at the golem to distract it while she set up a more complex and time consuming glyph. “Is everything alright because I’m kind of in the middle of something at the moment.”
“Oh sorry to bother you,” Salix yawned, “I just have a friend who’s supposed to start playing tonight and I was hoping you could help them out.”
Luz shot arrows at the golem, as she ran around it, making sure that she was drawing it away from the glyph she’d just planted so that it wouldn’t activate while she was still in the damage radius. “Uh, sure, I’m always happy to help but it’ll have to be in a minute. What’s her username?” She placed two more wind glyphs then fired a splintering arrow to make the golem hesitate just long enough for her to move in a direction that would stop him from activating them as it followed her. Hopefully she could get his HP low enough before activating the trap or else this could get messy.
“Her username is Witchling, I told her to meet you by the fountain in town square.” Salix paused, “You’re not doing the red mountain mission are you?”
Luz tried to laugh innocently into her mike as the magma golem, protector of the red mountain, flung a giant boulder at her. “What me? Solo a mission designed to take a five person party?” She jumped off of a pile of rubble, shooting an arrow at a wind glyph she’d placed below and let the gust shoot her upwards nearly high enough on the column that the golem couldn’t reach. “How did you know?”
“Your profile says you got a new achievement for getting to the heart of the mountain. Lazura, I thought you were going to wait until our weekly meetup.”
“I just didn’t want to bother you guys.” She used her last stamina point to climb out of the golem’s reach but that wasn’t stopping it from lobbing boulders at her while she was trying to climb. “You work all day-”
“So do you.”
“And school for you and Caesar starts in three days. I still think it’s cool you guys go to school together.” She reached the lamppost and climbed on top of it, finally freeing her hands so that she could use her bow again but she had no way of dodging now. This was her only shot.
“Yeah, and you’re starting at a new school in three days.”
“I just didn't want to bother you guys okay?” Luz fired a blasting arrow at the golem causing it to lurch back just enough to activate the last wind glyph she’d planted. “This is an artificer mission meaning you guys won’t benefit from the main loot.” The wind blasted the golem backwards into her final trap, a giant block of ice erupted from the ground fully encasing the golem and freezing it in place. Luz starred as its HP drained lower and lower from the quadruple damage it takes from high level ice attacks until… dammit.
“Come on Lazura, you helped me with the quest for the green thumb gauntlet.”
The tiniest sliver of red gleamed back at her from its health bar. The ice block shook as the golem tried to free itself, it had frozen mid throw animation so the second it released itself it would throw a boulder right where she was standing. She could start climbing down but she’d never make it to the ground and the fall damage alone would be enough to end her if she decided to take the quick way down. No, she only had one option.
“And you helped Caesar get the oracle sphere back when he thought it was worth something.”
Luz scrolled the wheel on her mouse, selecting the last specialty arrow in her arsenal, black garnet tip, double damage. Hopefully it would be enough. The golem had shaken its ice prison twice now, she had seconds before it broke free. Was that enough time?
“My point is, we’re a party and we help each other.”
She notched the arrow and drew it back, using the extra seconds while the golem shook for the third time to get the maximum drawback for maximum damage.
Hold.
“Lazura, are you still there?”
Now.
Luz released the arrow and watched it sail through the air, reaching the golem right as the ice shattered around it, piercing the creature with perfect timing, perfect precision, perfect everything. She watched as the red in the health bar drained and… no.
The golem stood upright, having taken its damage, Luz couldn’t notch another arrow in time. It lobbed a boulder and on instinct she jumped out of the way. Jumped right off of the lamppost. To the lava hole below.
Luz slammed her head against her keyboard and groaned as her screen went black.
“Lazura, are you still with me?” Salix’s voice was concerned but also very tired.
“Yeah, I’m still here.” Luz finally picked her chair off of the ground and slumped into it as the screen reset to her last save point at the entrance to the red mountain, only this time with practically nothing in her inventory, fifty less gold pieces and one hit point left.
“You died?”
“Yeah.” Luz sighed. “Alright, I’ll go help your friend now, then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend building back up what I lost then we can tackle this mountain together… If that’s alright with you and Caesar.”
“That’s more than alright, and thank you for helping with my friend. Just please be careful with her, she’s a little high strung and this is supposed to be a stress relief thing for her.”
“You got it. Now go get some sleep.”
Another yawn came from Salix’s mike. “Okay, talk to you after work tomorrow. Goodnight.”
Salix logged off and Luz smiled softly at how cute her friend sounded when she was tired. Maybe she could try to meet them in real life soon. No, Luz shook that thought from her head immediately, she didn’t need more people to disappoint.
Sighing, Luz trudged toward the nearest warp stone located a few minutes away and opened up her map. She clicked on town square and closed her eyes as her character was teleported to the center of The Boiling Isles.